Hoạt động 24/7
Hoạt động 24/7
Kansas has no dog bite statute, so an owner is liable under the common law when the owner had reason to know, before the bite, that the dog was likely to bite. The Kansas Supreme Court approved a jury instruction saying exactly that in Berry v. Kegans. Kansas courts have also adopted a Restatement rule that makes the keeper of a domestic animal answer for ordinary negligence, though the cases applying it involved a cow and a horse. In practice, the dog’s history and the owner’s choices decide a Kansas case far more than they would in a strict liability state.
This page covers how the knowledge rule and the negligence claim work, what you have to prove, local leash rules, who counts as an owner or keeper, defenses, the less than 50 percent fault bar, a child’s case, why landlords are rarely liable here, deadlines and the notice rule for city and county claims, damages after the Kansas Supreme Court struck down the cap on pain and suffering, local dangerous dog rules, rabies observation, and insurance.
Dog Bite Laws handles dog attack cases. Talk to us for free, and pay no fee unless we recover money for you.
Kansas courts decide dog bite claims under the common law. The Kansas Court of Appeals put it directly: “Kansas follows the common law of injury-by-animal.” The dog owner liability statute in the code, K.S.A. 47-645, covers a dog that kills, wounds, or worries a domestic animal and does not mention injuries to people. So a Kansas dog bite claim rests on rules the courts built, and there are two of them.
The first is the knowledge rule, often called the one bite rule. In Berry v. Kegans, a 1966 case about a six year old bitten by a neighbor’s Boxer in Wichita, the Kansas Supreme Court approved an instruction telling the jury that the owner of a dog is not liable for its biting “unless the owner has reason to know that it is likely to do so and this knowledge was prior to the incident,” and called it “in harmony with the general rule.” The Kansas Court of Appeals has stated the same idea using Restatement (Second) of Torts section 509, most recently in a 2012 pit bull case, Carr v. Vannoster: one who possesses or harbors a domestic animal that one knows or has reason to know has dangerous propensities abnormal to its class is liable for the harm it does, “although one has exercised the utmost care to prevent it from doing the harm.”
The second route is ordinary negligence. Kansas adopted the Restatement rule, now section 518, under which a person who keeps a domestic animal not known to be dangerous is still liable if he “is negligent in failing to prevent the harm.” The Kansas Supreme Court adopted that rule in Gardner v. Koenig in 1961, a case about a cow at a sale barn. In Mercer v. Fritts in 1984, a horse case, the Court of Appeals called the rule “still our law,” and the Supreme Court agreed that injury by animal law, not premises law, applied. A concurring justice in Mercer, citing Gardner, wrote that the basis of a keeper’s liability is failure to exercise reasonable care.
Put plainly: if the owner had reason to know, you do not have to prove carelessness. If the owner did not know, a negligence claim is still worth pleading, but be aware of its limits in a dog case. Gardner and Mercer involved livestock, and in Berry, the leading Kansas dog case, the Supreme Court approved an instruction that made the owner’s knowledge the only question.
Because Kansas has no statute, the elements come from the two common law theories, and most cases plead both.
The knowledge claim. You prove four things:
Once knowledge is shown, the owner’s care in restraining the dog does not get the owner off the hook: under the rule stated in Carr v. Vannoster, liability applies even when the owner “exercised the utmost care.”
The negligence claim. The Kansas Court of Appeals restated the general negligence elements in Colombel v. Milan: a duty owed by the defendant to the plaintiff, a breach of that duty, and that the breach was the proximate cause of the damages. If the negligence rule from the livestock cases is applied to a dog, that means showing the keeper failed to use reasonable care to control the dog, and that the failure led to the bite or knockdown.
The evidence in a Kansas case is mostly about the dog’s past and the owner’s habits. Berry shows what the jury looks at: the owners there won because their Boxer had never menaced or lunged at anyone and no one had complained about him. So look for the opposite: earlier bites or attacks, lunging at people, complaints to animal control, citations, warning signs posted by the owner, and anything the owner said after the bite about the dog’s past. Neighbors, mail carriers, and delivery drivers may have seen the dog before.
Leash rules that cover ordinary dogs are found in local codes. In Berry v. Kegans, for example, the court noted that “no leash law was in effect in the area” when the owners moved in, before the neighborhood was annexed into Wichita. So the rule that applies depends on where you were bitten, and your lawyer will check the local code.
Kansas does have one state crime aimed at dangerous animals. K.S.A. 21-6418 makes it a class B nonperson misdemeanor for the owner or custodian of an animal “of dangerous or vicious propensities who, knowing of such propensities,” lets it go at large or keeps it without taking ordinary care to restrain it. Notice that the crime itself requires knowledge, so the facts that would support a charge, such as earlier attacks the owner knew about, are the same facts that prove the civil knowledge claim.
Breaking a leash ordinance does not automatically prove negligence in Kansas. The Kansas Supreme Court in Pullen v. West said negligence per se requires a violation, causation, and proof that the legislature intended an individual right of action for injury arising out of the violation. And in Berry, where the only question was the owner’s knowledge, the Supreme Court found no error in refusing to instruct the jury on a Wichita vicious animal ordinance.
A leash citation can still matter. It is a dated official record that the dog was loose, and earlier complaints or citations about the same dog can help show what the owner knew.
The Kansas Court of Appeals put the rule in one sentence in Colombel v. Milan: “no one but an owner, possessor, keeper, or harborer of an animal can be held liable for it actions.” Kansas has no statute defining any of those words, so the courts borrow from the Restatement.
The same comment draws a hard line the other way: owning the land where a dog is kept, “even when coupled with permission given to a third person to keep it, is not enough.” In Carr v. Vannoster in 2012, the Court of Appeals applied that comment to a father who owned the house where his adult son lived and kept a pit bull, about a mile from the father’s own home, and held the father did not harbor the dog.
More than one person can qualify. Under the same Restatement comment, a person who heads the household where a family member keeps a dog harbors it along with the owner. If you are not sure who had legal responsibility for the dog, read what determines ownership of a dog. Naming the right people matters because each one’s homeowners or renters policy may be a separate source of payment.
Because Kansas has no dog bite statute, it also has no statutory list of defenses. Instead the dog’s owner raises the victim’s conduct in two ways: by arguing the bite was not the product of any known dangerous tendency, and by asking the jury to assign the victim a share of the fault.
Provocation. Berry v. Kegans is the Kansas example. The child and other children had been throwing mud clods at the chained dog, and she had been reaching toward it when she was bitten. The jury found for the owners, and the Supreme Court explained the verdict as a finding that the owners had no reason to know the dog was likely to injure anyone. The Court of Appeals later described Berry as “simply one of animal incitement to anger and invited injury.” For more, see our guide to dog bite provocation.
Trespass and place. The older Kansas rule, quoted in Berry from McComas v. Sanders, speaks of an animal that is “in a place where it has a right to be.” Expect an owner to argue that a person who came onto the property without permission, or reached over a fence, was owed less. Raise those facts with your lawyer early.
Assumption of risk. This is no longer a complete defense in Kansas. Before 2013 the doctrine survived only in certain employer and employee cases, and in Simmons v. Porter the Kansas Supreme Court overruled the cases “adhering to the assumption of risk doctrine as an absolute bar to recovery” and sent those cases to comparative fault. If you were bitten at work, for example as a groomer, veterinary technician, or kennel worker, tell your lawyer right away, because that situation can also involve workers compensation.
Do not accept an adjuster’s version of what you did. Whether your conduct counts against you is a question for the jury, and your lawyer should be the one answering it.
Kansas uses modified comparative fault, and the line sits below half. Under K.S.A. 60-258a, your own negligence does not bar recovery “if that party’s negligence was less than the causal negligence of the party or parties against whom a claim is made,” and the award is reduced by your percentage.
Do the arithmetic. A victim found 30 percent at fault recovers 70 percent of the damages. A victim found exactly 50 percent at fault recovers nothing, because 50 is not less than 50. In Negley v. Massey Ferguson the Kansas Supreme Court held that your share is compared to the combined fault of everyone you sued, so a victim at 40 percent still recovers where the owner and a dog sitter are 30 percent each.
Three more Kansas features matter:
Because the bar starts at 50 percent, a single statement like “I knew the dog was grumpy but reached for it anyway” can matter a great deal. Let your lawyer speak to the insurer.
Kansas law treats child victims differently in two important ways.
Fault. In Honeycutt v. City of Wichita, a 1990 case about a six year old, the Kansas Supreme Court refused to set an age below which a child cannot be at fault. It held that a child’s negligence is decided by the jury, measured against the care exercised by children of the same age, intelligence, capacity, and experience. A preschooler is held to a preschooler’s standard, not an adult’s, but the insurer can still argue the child’s conduct. A parent’s supervision can also come into it: in Mills v. Smith, where a 21 month old was bitten by a lion, the Court of Appeals approved letting the jury compare the parents’ fault.
Time. K.S.A. 60-515 lets a person who was under 18 when the claim arose bring it within one year after turning 18, but never more than eight years after the bite. That eight year limit is the trap. A child bitten at age four runs into it at age twelve, long before turning 18. A parent can always file on the child’s behalf sooner.
If you paid your child’s medical bills, ask a lawyer early whether any part of the claim runs on the ordinary two year clock rather than the child’s longer one. If an adjuster is blaming your child, read whether a child can provoke a dog. And because Kansas no longer caps pain and suffering in injury cases, a child’s facial scarring is valued on its full facts.
Kansas law makes it hard to hold a landlord responsible for a tenant’s dog. In Colombel v. Milan, decided January 23, 1998, a woman suffered severe and permanent injuries when the tenants’ dog attacked her at their rental home. She sued the landlords, alleging they knew about the dog’s dangerous and vicious propensities and were negligent in letting it stay. The Kansas Court of Appeals affirmed dismissal of the landlords.
The court gave two reasons. First, under injury by animal law only an owner, possessor, keeper, or harborer can be liable, and a landlord who simply allows a tenant to keep a dog is none of those. Second, under Kansas premises law a landlord who has handed possession to a tenant is generally not liable for conditions on the leased property, and a dog is not a structural defect. The court added that there were no Kansas cases imposing liability on a landlord for injuries inflicted on a third person by a tenant’s dog.
So, plainly: in Kansas a landlord is not liable just because the landlord knew a tenant had a dangerous dog.
The Court of Appeals followed Colombel in a 2012 pit bull case, Carr v. Vannoster, and declined to expand landlord liability along the lines some other states allow. There are narrow openings. Kansas recognizes exceptions to the landlord rule, including “when parts of the land are retained in the lessor’s control which the lessee is entitled to use.” In Carr the court considered that exception for a dog bite in a driveway but found no evidence the landlord had kept control of it. Under the Restatement comment Kansas courts follow, a person who takes a dog into their own household can become a harborer. Whether either opening fits depends on facts a lawyer should gather early. Separately, the owner of a home or business where a dog bite happens is liable if they owned, kept, or harbored the dog, under the rules above.
Two years from the bite is the general rule. K.S.A. 60-513 sets two years for an action for injury to the rights of another not arising on contract, and also for wrongful death. The clock starts when the bite first causes substantial injury, which in a dog bite case is almost always the day it happens.
Government claims are governed by the Kansas Tort Claims Act, under which a city or county is liable for an employee’s negligence where a private person would be. A police dog bite, a dog held at a city shelter, or a school field trip can all raise this. Some government acts are immune, so these cases need early review.
Treat the two years as an outside limit. Rabies observation lasts ten days, doorbell video can be overwritten, and wounds heal before anyone photographs them. Our guide to the dog bite statute of limitations explains how these clocks fit together.
The Kansas Department of Health and Environment treats any penetration of the skin by a dog’s teeth as a bite exposure, and the injuries that follow vary far more than the word bite suggests.
A claim settled in the first few weeks can leave out scar revision, counseling, or lost earning ability that only shows up later.
A Kansas dog bite victim can recover economic damages, such as medical and hospital bills, future surgery, therapy, counseling, and lost wages or earning capacity, and noneconomic damages, such as pain, suffering, disfigurement, and mental anguish.
The biggest Kansas point is what is not there. K.S.A. 60-19a02 still appears in the statute book with a cap on noneconomic damages, set at $350,000 for causes of action accruing on or after July 1, 2022. But on June 14, 2019, in Hilburn v. Enerpipe Ltd., the Kansas Supreme Court held that cap “facially unconstitutional because it violates section 5 of the Kansas Constitution Bill of Rights,” the right to a jury trial. The court said the cap intrudes on the jury’s job of deciding what an injured person is owed. So in a Kansas personal injury case today, a jury’s award for pain and scarring is not cut down by that statute.
Three limits do still apply:
Punitive damages. Under K.S.A. 60-3702, you must prove by clear and convincing evidence that the owner acted with willful or wanton conduct, fraud, or malice. The jury decides whether to award them and the judge sets the amount, which generally cannot exceed the lesser of the defendant’s highest annual gross income in the five prior years or $5 million. For an overview, see dog bite compensation.
Kansas cities write their own dangerous animal rules, as the Overland Park ordinance discussed below shows, so the process, the hearing, and the consequences of a dangerous dog finding depend on the local code where the dog lives.
The state does have the crime discussed above. Under K.S.A. 21-6418, an owner or custodian who knows of a dog’s dangerous or vicious propensities and lets it run at large, or keeps it without ordinary care to restrain it, commits a class B nonperson misdemeanor.
For your civil claim, a local dangerous dog finding or a 21-6418 charge is something to investigate rather than a separate source of money. Kansas liability turns on what the owner knew, and an official finding made before your bite can help show what the owner knew. A finding after your bite still documents what the dog did. Ask animal control for the complete file on the dog, including earlier complaints that never led to a designation.
On breed, in Hearn v. City of Overland Park, decided April 14, 1989, the Kansas Supreme Court upheld an Overland Park ordinance that defined pit bull dogs as dangerous animals, rejecting vagueness, due process, and equal protection challenges. Local rules can change, so check the current code where the bite happened.
Report the bite to local animal control or the police, and to your county health department. Kansas rabies control runs through the local health officer. The Kansas Department of Health and Environment’s rabies surveillance page says the local health officer decides where a dog that bites a human spends its 10 day observation. Under K.S.A. 75-5661, a law enforcement officer or local health officer may take up any animal that exposed a person to rabies, and the animal is then handled under KDHE’s rules.
KDHE’s rabies investigation guideline counts the day of the bite as day zero, so the observation ends ten days later. The reason for ten days is that, according to KDHE, dogs can shed the virus in their saliva up to 10 days before they show signs of illness. Whether you need rabies shots is a decision for your doctor and the health department, especially if the dog is a stray, which KDHE treats as higher risk, or cannot be found.
KDHE says that in Kansas, cities and some counties maintain rabies vaccine laws, so whether the dog had to be vaccinated depends on where it lives. Rabies is not just theoretical here: KDHE says skunks carry it and the virus is present in all Kansas counties, and dogs have tested positive. If the owner cannot show proof of vaccination, read about being bitten by an unvaccinated dog.
The report also matters for the case. It creates a dated official record of the dog, the owner, and the injury, and it may reveal earlier reports about the same dog. Here is what happens after a dog bite is reported, and what happens if you do not report it.
No average can tell you what your own Kansas claim is worth. What is published is national insurance data. For 2025, research by the Insurance Information Institute and State Farm reported a national average of $65,450 per dog-related injury claim across 28,450 claims. That figure is an insurance claim average across every claim, large and small, in every state. It is not a Kansas number, it is not a settlement value, and it does not predict any one case.
What actually moves the number in a Kansas case:
Our overview of dog bite settlement amounts explains how injury levels affect value, and the dog bite settlement calculator gives a rough sense of ranges.
In many Kansas dog bite cases the money comes from a homeowners or renters liability policy rather than the owner’s savings. The Kansas Insurance Department’s home and renters shopper’s guide explains that a homeowners policy’s personal liability coverage pays for a claim or lawsuit for bodily injury to others caused by an accident on the property or by the policyholder’s personal activities, and that most policies start at a minimum such as $100,000 per claim. The Insurance Information Institute says homeowners and renters policies typically cover dog bite liability up to the policy limits, usually $100,000 to $300,000.
Two more Kansas details from the state guide are worth knowing. Medical payments coverage pays an injured visitor’s medical bills with no negligence requirement, typically up to $1,000 per person, which can help with early bills even while fault is disputed. And a renter has no liability coverage at all unless they bought a renters policy, which is usually written for $100,000 per claim.
Because Kansas has no joint and several liability, finding every policy matters: the owner’s, a household member’s, the person who was watching the dog, and the policy of anyone else who may have kept or harbored it. Do not take the owner’s word that there is no coverage. Ask for the carrier’s name at the scene, and let a lawyer handle the adjuster, whose questions may be aimed at your share of the fault.
For the full sequence, read our guide on how to file a dog bite claim.
Dog Bite Laws handles dog attack cases, and Kansas is a state where preparation decides the result. With no dog bite statute, the case usually rests on proving what the owner knew about the dog, and on keeping your own share of fault well under the 50 percent bar. Our work is to identify everyone who owned, kept, or harbored the dog, get the animal control and health department records, find the neighbors and earlier complaints that show the dog’s history, file any notice a city or county requires, and locate every insurance policy that might pay.
We deal with the insurer so that you do not have to, and we push back when an adjuster tries to turn an ordinary moment into provocation. We work on a contingency fee, so there is nothing to pay to start and no fee unless we recover money for you. Founding attorney Michael Agruss built the firm around injury clients who need someone else to carry the paperwork.
We take dog bite cases across Kansas, including Wichita, Overland Park, Kansas City, Olathe, Topeka, and Lawrence. If you were bitten across the state line in Kansas City, Missouri, different law applies, so tell us where it happened. If you or your child was bitten, contact us for a free consultation. We will tell you honestly whether there is a claim worth bringing.
Largely, yes. Kansas has no dog bite statute, so an owner is liable when they had reason to know before the bite that the dog was likely to bite. Kansas courts have also adopted a negligence rule for domestic animals, but the cases applying it involved a cow and a horse, and in the leading dog case the Kansas Supreme Court approved an instruction that turned only on the owner's knowledge. A lawyer can tell you whether a negligence claim fits your facts.
Two years from the bite for an adult, under K.S.A. 60-513. A child can file until one year after turning 18, but no later than eight years after the bite, so a young child's deadline can come well before adulthood. Claims against a city, county, or school district first need a written notice of claim. Waiting is risky either way, because evidence about the dog's history disappears quickly.
Usually not. In Colombel v. Milan the Kansas Court of Appeals held that a landlord who allegedly knew about a tenant's vicious dog was not liable, because only an owner, possessor, keeper, or harborer of a dog can be. The Court of Appeals followed that rule again in 2012 in Carr v. Vannoster. A landlord who took the dog into their own household, or a bite in an area the landlord kept under its own control, could present a different question, but Carr found no such facts.
Not for an injury case. The Kansas Supreme Court ruled in Hilburn v. Enerpipe on June 14, 2019 that the statutory cap on noneconomic damages violates the right to a jury trial, so a jury's award for pain, scarring, and emotional harm is not reduced by it. Different limits remain for a death, which carries a $250,000 cap on nonpecuniary damages, and for claims against government bodies, capped at $500,000 per occurrence.
Kansas reduces your award by your percentage of fault, and you recover nothing if your share is 50 percent or more of the combined fault of those you sued. That makes the fault argument the insurer's main tool. A child's conduct is judged against other children of the same age and experience, not adults. Avoid recorded statements and let a lawyer answer questions about how the bite happened.
A healthy dog that bites a person may be held for a 10 day observation instead of being tested, and the local health officer decides where. The day of the bite counts as day zero. Report the bite to animal control or the health department. A stray or a dog that cannot be found is treated as higher risk, and your doctor may recommend rabies shots.
Often the dog owner's homeowners or renters insurance. The Kansas Insurance Department explains that personal liability coverage pays claims for bodily injury to others, and that medical payments coverage, typically around $1,000 per person, pays a visitor's medical bills regardless of fault. Larger claims are paid under the liability coverage up to the policy limit, so identifying every policy that applies is an early priority.
"*" là ký hiệu cho các trường bắt buộc
"*" là ký hiệu cho các trường bắt buộc
Hãy liên hệ với chúng tôi qua điện thoại, email, tin nhắn hoặc trò chuyện trực tuyến để trao đổi về trường hợp của bạn.